I guess it's one of those articles about betting with animals that makes you wonder if it's going to be abused or not. If such thing attracts people who are willing to abuse animals and take big risk for selfish reasons then I don't think it is an idea worth encouraging. I believe good betting space should be both useful and safe for everyone.
Hopefully it's not even real animal
There are many gambling or racing/fighting game that involves animal. Hopefully this act will end since they sometimes tortured or force to do things out of fear or not being able to eat if they will not do it like those animal in carnivals. Now that we are in era of technology it is really better to engaged it thru computer and not anymore in real animals. Like games that will require some skills or adding items to boost their ability.